Breaking
Wealth World News
Archive

2024

Browsing
Politics

‘NO EVIDENCE’: Biden mocked for stretching the truth on shock jock Howard Stern’s show

President Biden faced a wave of criticism on Friday — from media outlets and commentators — for stretching the truth during a rare live interview with radio host Howard Stern.

During his interview with Stern, Biden spoke about an array of subjects, including a debate with former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election and the time he ‘got arrested’ as a teenager at a Delaware desegregation protest.

Some of the claims made by the president during the hour-long interview, however, faced scrutiny from the national media and certain individuals in the political realm who have become accustomed to Biden’s habit of straying from the truth.

As he has done in the past, Biden recounted during his interview with Stern what his mother had supposedly told him about accepting then-Sen. Barack Obama’s invitation to serve as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election.

Biden recounted: ‘She said, ‘Remember when they were desegregating Lynnfield, the neighborhood … suburbia — and I told you — and there was a Black family moving in and there was — people were down there protesting; I told you not to go down there, and you went down, remember that? And you got arrested standing on the porch with a Black family? And they brought you back, the police?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, Mom, I remember that.’’

The New York Times, which took aim at President Biden on Thursday for ‘actively and effectively’ avoiding journalists’ questions during his first term in office, reported Friday that Biden ‘appeared to once again stretch the truth about being arrested at a Delaware desegregation protest as a teenager.’

‘There is no evidence that he was ever arrested at a civil-rights protest,’ the Times added.

CNN also piled on Biden’s claim, noting in a fact check that there is ‘no evidence Biden ever got arrested during a civil rights protest, as the Washington Post and PolitiFact found when they looked into this claim in 2022 – and Biden has at least twice told the story of his supposed presence at this particular Delaware protest without mentioning any arrest, instead claiming that the police merely took him home that day.’

Biden also faced criticism from CNN earlier this week after he ‘revived a debunked tale about his past — his fictional claim that he used to drive an 18-wheeler truck,’ during a campaign event in Florida this week.

Fact-checking the president’s claim, CNN wrote: ‘Biden has repeatedly embellished or invented biographical tidbits. In 2021, he claimed during a tour of a Mack Trucks facility: ‘I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man,’ then added, ‘I got to.’ At a separate 2021 event, he told college students studying truck technology, ‘I used to drive a tractor-trailer,’ adding, ‘I only did it for part of a summer, but I got my license anyway.”

‘Biden’s claim remains untrue. There is no evidence he ever drove an 18-wheeler,’ the outlet added of his Tuesday remarks.

Biden also faced backlash for embellishing the truth from individuals on social media, including Greg Price, a popular conservative X user and the communications director for the State Freedom Caucus Network.

Price noted a number of questionable remarks made by Biden during his interview with Stern that he believes are ‘lies,’ including a tale he told about saving ‘half a dozen’ lives during his past tenure as a lifeguard and the arrest he suffered amid civil rights protests when he was a teenager.

Another suspected ‘lie’ was Biden’s claim that he was ‘runner-up in state scoring’ in football during his high school years.

Price’s post on social media also referenced a claim made by Biden about receiving ‘salacious pictures’ from women in the 1970s during his time as a senator, which he gave to the Secret Service.

‘I got put in that ten most eligible bachelors list … and a lot of lovely women… would send very salacious pictures, and I’d just give them to the Secret Service. I thought somebody would think I was —,’ Biden told Stern before shifting topics.

It’s unclear how the Secret Service would have been involved. Senators do not receive Secret Service protection, and Biden didn’t receive Secret Service protection until 2008, when he was elected vice president.

Others also took aim at the president for his remarks on Stern’s show.

‘Another day, another Biden lie … at least no one got eaten by cannibals in this one,’ conservative commentator Rita Panahi wrote in a post on X.

Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, co-host of ‘The Five,’ also weighed in on Biden’s ‘lies,’ questioning Friday how Biden can debate if ‘he can’t even keep his lies straight.’

Earlier this month, during a visit to a war memorial near his hometown in Pennsylvania, Biden faced criticism for appearing to imply that his uncle was eaten by cannibals after his plane was shot down during World War II.

‘He flew single-engine planes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. He had volunteered because someone couldn’t make it. He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea at the time,’ Biden said at the time. ‘They never recovered his body.’

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre later acknowledged that Biden’s maternal uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, whom he refers to as ‘Uncle Bosie,’ did die in WWII when his plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean, but confirmed he was not eaten by cannibals, as Biden seemed to suggest on two separate occasions during his visit to the state.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
Keep Reading
By
Politics

Justice Thomas raised crucial question about legitimacy of special counsel’s prosecution of Trump

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised a question Thursday that goes to the heart of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s charges against former President Donald Trump.

The high court was considering Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution for actions he took while president, but another issue is whether Smith and the Office of Special Counsel have the authority to bring charges at all.

‘Did you, in this litigation, challenge the appointment of special counsel?’ Thomas asked Trump attorney John Sauer on Thursday during a nearly three-hour session at the Supreme Court.

Sauer replied that Trump’s attorneys had not raised that concern ‘directly’ in the current Supreme Court case — in which justices are considering Trump’s arguments that presidential immunity precludes the prosecution of charges that the former president illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election.

Sauer told Thomas that, ‘we totally agree with the analysis provided by Attorney General Meese [III] and Attorney General Mukasey.’ 

‘It points to a very important issue here because one of [the special counsel’s] arguments is, of course, that we should have this presumption of regularity. That runs into the reality that we have here an extraordinary prosecutorial power being exercised by someone who was never nominated by the president or confirmed by the Senate at any time. So we agree with that position. We hadn’t raised it yet in this case when this case went up on appeal,’ Sauer said.

In a 42-page amicus brief presented to the high court in March, Meese and Mukasey questioned whether ‘Jack Smith has lawful authority to undertake the ‘criminal prosecution” of Trump. Mukasey and Meese — both former U.S. attorneys general — said Smith and the Office of Special Counsel itself have no authority to prosecute, in part because he was never confirmed by the Senate to any position.

Federal prosecutions, ‘can be taken only by persons properly appointed as federal officers to properly created federal offices,’ Meese and Mukasey argued. ‘But neither Smith nor the position of special counsel under which he purportedly acts meets those criteria. He wields tremendous power, effectively answerable to no one, by design. And that is a serious problem for the rule of law — whatever one may think of former President Trump or the conduct on January 6, 2021, that Smith challenges in the underlying case.’

The crux of the problem, according to Meese, is that Smith was never confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. attorney, and no other statute allows the U.S. attorney general to name merely anyone as special counsel. Smith was acting U.S. attorney for a federal district in Tennessee in 2017, but he was never nominated to the position. He resigned from the private sector after then-President Trump nominated a different prosecutor as U.S. attorney for the middle district of Tennessee.

Meese and Mukasey argued that because the special counsel exercises broad authority to convene grand juries and make prosecutorial decisions, independent of the White House or the attorney general, he is far more powerful than any government officer who has not been confirmed by the Senate. 

Sauer and Trump’s other attorneys objected to the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment in the charges against Trump in the classified documents case, also brought by Smith, before a Florida federal court. 

In a March court filing in Florida, Trump’s attorneys claimed that the special counsel’s office argues in federal court that Smith is wholly independent of the White House and Garland — contradicting Trump’s arguments that the federal charges against him are politically motivated. But at the same time, the special counsel’s attorneys insist that Smith is subordinate to the attorney general, and therefore not subject to Senate confirmation under the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

‘There is significant tension between the Office’s assurances to that court that Smith is independent, and not prosecuting the Republican nominee for President at the direction of the Biden Administration, and the Office’s assurance here that Smith is not independent and is instead so thoroughly supervised and accountable to President Biden and Attorney General Garland that this Court should not be concerned about such tremendous power being exercised to alter the trajectory of the ongoing presidential election,’ Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing.

The special counsel’s office, responding to Trump’s claims in the Florida case, argued that the attorney general ‘has the statutory authority to appoint a Special Prosecutor’ and that the Supreme Court even upheld that authority ‘in closely analogous circumstances nearly 50 years ago’ — in a 1974 case that challenged the prosecutor investigating the late President Richard Nixon. 

Meese and Mukasey wrote in their brief that the Nixon case was irrelevant because it ‘concerned the relationship between the President and DOJ as an institution, not between the President and any specific actor purportedly appointed by DOJ.’ 

The pair also said special counsel investigations are necessary and often lawful, but stated that ‘the Attorney General cannot appoint someone never confirmed by the Senate, as a substitute United States Attorney under the title ‘Special Counsel.’ Smith’s appointment was thus unlawful, as are all actions flowing from it, including his prosecution of former President Trump.’

Smith was a private citizen when Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed him as special counsel to investigate Trump in 2022. 

Other recent special counsels — including John Durham’s Trump-Russia probe; David Weiss of the Hunter Biden investigation; and Robert Hur, who investigated Biden’s mishandling of classified documents — were all confirmed by the Senate to various positions before being named as special counsels. 

The Florida court has yet to rule on Trump’s motion to dismiss the classified documents case due to claims that Smith was improperly appointed. 

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Trump’s immunity arguments before its term ends in June.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
Keep Reading
By
Business

Patriots owner says ‘Jew hatred’ on U.S. college campuses parallels Germany in 1930s and ’40s

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said Thursday that the campus protests launched nationwide in response to Israel’s campaign in Gaza are another parallel of the lead-up to the Holocaust.

In an interview Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Kraft, a longtime supporter of Columbia University, said that when he created the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, in part as a response to the “Unite the Right” protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, he saw rising signs of extreme hatred.

In the current college protests, he said, he’s seeing further echoes of the forces that helped give rise to the Nazis.  

“It starts like it did in the ’30s in Germany,” Kraft said. “Five years ago, I saw signs of hate developing here. I don’t want the 1940s to replicate here and unfortunately, I’m seeing signs of that and good people have to stand up and be counted. And, you know, that’s where the leadership is.”

“It’s shocking to me that young Jewish students at Columbia, in New York City, are scared,” he added. “They’re going home.”

Chabad at Columbia, the local chapter of the global Hasidic-Orthodox Jewish group, said Sunday that Jewish students have had offensive rhetoric hurled at them, including being told to “go back to Poland” and “stop killing children.” 

Even amid reports of harassment of Jewish individuals during the campus protests, other Jewish students are taking part in them. Additionally, Muslim students have also faced threats on campus since the outbreak of the Middle East conflict this fall.    

In November, the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights opened investigations into alleged antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents at multiple U.S. colleges and universities, as well as a local school district. 

Even as Kraft, who graduated from Columbia in 1963, compared today’s protests unfavorably to the antiwar ones he experienced as a student in the 1960s — hailing that era as an “open forum” where “free speech prevailed and people express[ed] their opinion” — he praised the decision to send in the New York Police Department to arrest protesters.

“I think Mayor [Eric] Adams and Governor [Kathy] Hochul and the New York Police Department did a great job when they were called in,” Kraft said. “But this is about enforcing the rules that we have on campus and … holding people accountable.” 

Kraft also published an op-ed Thursday on the front page of the New York Post with the headline, “Stand up to Jew hatred: Campus leaders must show courage and stop radical professors from poisoning young minds.”

“The Columbia I loved is no longer a place I know,” Kraft wrote.

He went on to call out faculty members who he said are “more focused on politics than they are on education.” Many faculty members where protests have erupted have expressed solidarity with the protesters when it comes to crackdowns on the demonstrations. 

Earlier this week, Kraft announced he would suspend his financial support of Columbia in response to its handling of the protests, though he later clarified in a separate interview that he would still back the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life on campus, claiming it has been a “haven of safety.”

The nationwide crackdown on campus protests continued Wednesday as 108 people were arrested in protests around Boston’s Emerson College last evening, while police arrested 93 people on the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles after warning protesters to disperse.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called on Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to resign after meeting with her, while also threatening federal funding for schools.

Columbia’s board of trustees said Wednesday it “strongly supports President Shafik as she steers the university through this extraordinarily challenging time.”

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS
Keep Reading
By
Business

Open seating no more? Southwest CEO says airline is weighing cabin changes

Southwest Airlines is considering changes to its single-class, open-seating cabins to drive up revenue, CEO Bob Jordan told CNBC on Thursday, a shift that could be among the largest in the airline’s history.

“We’re looking into new initiatives, things like the way we seat and board our aircraft,” Jordan said in an interview after the carrier’s disappointing first-quarter report.

Southwest’s all-Boeing 737 fleet has a single economy class cabin and no seating assignments, though it does offer earlier boarding for a fee so customers can snag their preferred seats. The airline has focused on keeping its product simple and user-friendly for years, aiming to keep its own costs and complexity to a minimum.

Meanwhile, rivals including Delta and United have touted high revenue growth for premium seating such as business class and strong upsell rates.

Analysts have repeatedly asked Southwest about opportunities for premium seating or additional fees. (The airline doesn’t charge travelers for their first two checked bags.)

Most U.S. airlines charge travelers to choose many of its seats in advance, even those that don’t come with extra legroom. Eight U.S. carriers — Alaska, Allegiant, American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Spirit and United — together brought in $4.2 billion from seating fees in their domestic networks in 2022, according to Jay Sorensen, an airline ancillary revenue expert at IdeaWorksCompany.

Jordan said no decisions have been made on what kind of changes Southwest will ultimately make, but he said studies have yielded “interesting” results.

“Customer preferences do change over time,” Jordan said.

While details were scarce during Southwest’s earnings call, when asked whether Southwest would consider a separated cabin on its planes, Ryan Green, the carrier’s chief commercial officer said: “Curtains and things like that are a bit far afield from what Southwest Airlines is.”

Green added that the carrier is not considering charging for checked bags because “people choose Southwest Airlines because we don’t have bag fees.”

— CNBC’s Phil LeBeau contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS
Keep Reading
By
Business

All the data so far is showing inflation isn’t going away, and is making things tough on the Fed

The last batch of inflation news that Federal Reserve officials will see before their policy meeting next week is in, and none of it is very good.

In the aggregate, Commerce Department indexes that the Fed relies on for inflation signals showed prices continuing to climb at a rate still considerably ahead of the central bank’s 2% annual goal, according to separate reports this week.

Within that picture came several salient points: An abundance of money still sloshing through the financial system is giving consumers lasting buying power. In fact, shoppers are spending more than they’re taking in, a situation neither sustainable nor disinflationary. Finally, consumers are dipping into savings to fund those purchases, creating a precarious scenario, if not now then down the road.

Put it all together, and it adds up to a Fed likely to be cautious and not in the mood anytime soon to start cutting interest rates.

“Just spending a lot of money is creating demand, it’s creating stimulus. With unemployment under 4%, it shouldn’t be that surprising that prices aren’t” going down, said Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities. “Spending numbers aren’t going down anytime soon. So you might have a sticky inflation scenario.”

Indeed, data the Bureau of Economic Analysis released Friday showed that spending outpaced income in March, as it has in three of the past four months, while the personal savings rate plunged to 3.2%, its lowest level since October 2022.

At the same time, the personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s key measure in determining inflation pressures, moved up to 2.7% in March when including all items, and held at 2.8% for the vital core measure that takes out more volatile food and energy prices.

A day earlier, the department reported that annualized inflation in the first quarter ran at a 3.7% core rate in the first quarter in total, and 3.4% on the headline basis. That came as real gross domestic product growth slowed to a 1.6% pace, well below the consensus estimate.

The stubborn inflation data raised several ominous specters, namely that the Fed may have to keep rates elevated for longer than it or financial markets would like, threatening the hoped-for soft economic landing.

There’s an even more chilling threat that should inflation really persist, central bankers may have to not only consider holding rates where they are but also contemplate future hikes.

“For now, it means the Fed’s not going to be cutting, and if [inflation] doesn’t come down, the Fed’s either going to have to hike at some point or keep rates higher for longer,” said LaVorgna, who was chief economist for the National Economic Council under former President Donald Trump. “Does that ultimately give us the hard landing?”

The inflation problem in the U.S. today first emerged in 2022, and had multiple sources.

At the beginning of the flare-up, the issues came largely from supply chain disruptions that Fed officials thought would go away once shippers and manufacturers had the chance to catch up as pandemic restrictions eased.

But even with the Covid economic crisis well in the rear view mirror, Congress and the Biden administration continue to spend lavishly, with the budget deficit at 6.2% of GDP as of the end of 2023. That’s the highest outside of the Covid years since 2012 and a level generally associated with economic downturns, not expansions.

On top of that, a still-bustling labor market, in which job openings outnumbered available workers at one point by a 2 to 1 margin and are still at about 1.4 to 1, also helped keep wage pressures high.

Now, even with demand shifting back from goods to services, the normal state of the U.S. economy, inflation remains elevated and is confounding the Fed’s efforts to slow demand.

Fed officials had thought inflation would ease this year as housing costs subsided. While most economists still expect an influx of supply to pull down shelter-related prices, other areas have cropped up.

For instance, core PCE services inflation excluding housing — a relatively new wrinkle in the inflation equation nicknamed “supercore” — is running at a 5.6% annualized rate over the past three months, according to Mike Sanders, head of fixed income at Madison Investments.

Demand, which the Fed’s rate hikes were supposed to quell, has remained robust, helping drive inflation and signaling that the central bank may not have as much power as it thinks to bring down the pace of price increases.

“If inflation remains higher, the Fed will be faced with the difficult choice of pushing the economy into a recession, abandoning its soft landing scenario, or tolerating inflation higher than 2%,” Sanders said. “To us, accepting higher inflation is the more prudent option.”

Thus far, the economy has managed to avoid broader damage from the inflation problem, though there are some notable cracks.

Credit delinquencies have hit their highest level in a decade, and there’s a growing unease on Wall Street that there’s more volatility to come.

Inflation expectations also are on the rise, with the closely watched University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey showing one- and five-year inflation expectations respectively at annual rates of 3.2% and 3%, their highest since November 2023.

No less a source than JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon this week vacillated from calling the U.S. economic boom “unbelievable” on Wednesday to a day letter telling the Wall Street Journal that he’s worried all the government spending is creating inflation that is more intractable than what is currently appreciated.

“That’s driving a lot of this growth, and that will have other consequences possibly down the road called inflation, which may not go away like people expect,” Dimon said. “So I look at the range of possible outcomes. You can have that soft landing. I’m a little more worried that it may not be so soft and inflation may not go quite the way people expect.”

Dimon estimated that markets are pricing in the odds of a soft landing at 70%.

“I think it’s half that,” he said.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS
Keep Reading
By
Sports

Falcons’ new QB said Kirk Cousins reached out after surprise pick

The Atlanta Falcons’ decision to draft Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr. with the 8th overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft may have puzzled some, but Penix himself said he wasn’t shocked.

‘Personally, I feel like I’m the best quarterback out of the draft,’ Penix, one of six quarterbacks drafted during the first round, said Friday during his introductory press conference with the Falcons. ‘I’m excited that I landed here and I’m excited to get started,’

Atlanta’s pick was surprising to some fans and media considering the Falcons just signed veteran quarterback Kirk Cousins to a four-year, $180 million contract with $100 million guaranteed in March. Reports from The Athletic and NFL Network said Cousins was left ‘shocked’ and stunned by his team’s selection, but that didn’t stop Cousins from contacting Penix on draft night.

‘He did reach out. We had a very good conversation,’ Penix confirmed on Friday. ‘I’m going to keep (the conversation) just between me and him right now, but it was definitely a good conversation. Im super excited to work with him and he said he’s the same with me.’

NFL DRAFT GRADES: Every team’s pick in 2024 first round broken down

NFL DRAFT HUB: Latest NFL Draft mock drafts, news, live picks, grades and analysis.

OPINION: Don’t blame Falcons just yet for NFL draft bombshell pick of QB Michael Penix Jr.

‘Kirk is an amazing guy. I actually watched (Netflix’s) ‘Quarterback’ series with him and seeing that he’s a man of faith just like me. He’s all about his family,’ Penix said. ‘I really enjoyed that to kind of get a feel of what kind of guy he is. I’m super blessed to be able to be in the room with him, to work with him and to support him as he continues with his career.’

On Thursday evening, Falcons general manager Terry Fontenot confirmed Cousins will be the team’s short-term solution, while Penix is the team’s long-term answer. ‘This is a pick thinking about the future,’ Fontenot said. Head coach Raheem Morris said Penix will ‘come in and learn from a player that we just picked up.’ (Cousins, 35, is coming off a season-ending Achilles injury.)

Although he’s prepared to serve as Cousins’ backup, Penix, who turns 24 in May, said he’ll continue to ‘prepare and work just like I’m the starter no matter what my role is.’

‘If I’m not on the field right away, I’m learning. But at the same thing, I’m still going to prepare like I’m on going to be on that field,’ Penix said. ‘You never know what can happen. You never know when your number’s called. But you have to be ready. So for me, I’m going to do whatever I can to be ready day one. I’m still going to put in the same work, I’m going to prepare and work just like I’m the starter no matter what my role is.’

Penix said his focus is on the field and not the commentary surrounding the pick.

‘I’m just super excited for the opportunity. It’s been a childhood dream of mine,’ he said. ‘As far as what anybody else feels about the decisions made, I have no control over that. All I can control is what I do and what I bring to this team. For me, I know that I’m going to be a great leader on-and-off the field as well. I’m going to be a great person and great teammate as well.’

This post appeared first on USA TODAY
Keep Reading
By
Sports

Tommy John strikes again: Injured Brewers starter out rest of season

MILWAUKEE — The bad news on the injury front for the Milwaukee Brewers just keeps coming. And Friday’s was a gut punch, to be sure.

Starting pitcher Wade Miley told reporters prior to the team’s interleague series opener against the New York Yankees at American Family Field that recent imaging showed damage to the ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow that will need surgery to correct.

He plans on having the procedure done as soon as possible, and will miss the rest of the season as a result.

Then there’s also the matter of the rest of his career – at 37 years old and with over 12 years of major-league service time under his belt, Miley will need to decide whether working toward a potential comeback in 2025 is realistic.

‘I need the full Tommy John,’ said Miley, who signed what was essentially a one-year, $8.5 million contract with the Brewers on Dec. 4. ‘It’s off the bone enough where I can’t do the brace (a type of UCL repair). We’ll get it fixed and then I’ll have the option in 10, 11, 12 months whether or not we’re going to keep going.

All things Brewers: Latest Milwaukee Brewers news, schedule, roster, stats, injury updates and more.

‘It sucks. But at the end of the day it’s always a possibility, especially pitchers, that it can happen. I’ve just got to keep my head down, move forward and find other ways to be impactful in the clubhouse and around the fellas.’

Miley was slow to get up to speed physically in spring training and pitched only two innings in one Cactus League appearance before opening the season on the IL with a shoulder issue.

He returned on April 10 with four innings against the Cincinnati Reds, then made a three-inning start against the San Diego Padres six days later before going back on the IL on Monday with what was termed as elbow inflammation.

‘Wade has always battled,’ said manager Pat Murphy. ‘He’s had a lot of ailments but he always toes the rubber and gives you great effort. He’s such an example for everyone else with the way he competes and how helpful he is as a teammate.

‘So, when one of those guys goes down, it hurts.’

Indeed, aside from the production the Brewers hoped they’d again be getting from Miley — he went 9-4 with a 3.14 ERA and WHIP of 1.14 in 22 starts (120⅓ innings) in 2024 — they also were well aware of the value he brings to the clubhouse.

‘This moves him to a non-playing player who’s now coaching,’ said Murphy.

Miley said after his IL placement Monday that he thought maybe he was dealing with bone spurs in his elbow. He had imaging done Tuesday and received the bad news not long thereafter.

‘I knew it was a different pain than I was dealing with the last couple years,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t really hurt that bad. That’s the weird part. I thought UCL damage would be more painful; I’ve seen videos of dudes blowing out that looked like it hurt. I never really got to that. It was just discomfort.

‘I don’t know how long it’s been messed up. I know I haven’t felt right, really, since spring training. At what point it happened? I can’t take you to a pitch, can’t take you to a moment. It just is what it is.’

In his third stint with the Brewers (2018, 2023 and this season), Miley is 108-99 with a 4.07 ERA in 317 career appearances with 310 of those starts.

A first-round pick of the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2011, Miley has pitched for eight organizations in all. His no-hitter while pitching for the Cincinnati Reds in May of 2021 was is biggest highlight to date.

While mulling what’s to come, Miley stressed the importance to him of being able to write the end of his story if at all possible.

‘That was the hardest thought when you get the news,’ he said. ‘It’s like, ‘Dadgum. I’m 37 years old. Who knows what’s next?’ I’ve always said I want to go out on my own (terms). I still feel like I’ve got more in the tank.

‘I’m weirdly kind of excited. Get this thing fixed and maybe I can pitch without pain for a little bit. I’ve been dealing with elbow stuff for 4-5 years now. Looking on the bright side, we get this thing fixed up, who knows?’

Functioning on the margins of their pitching depth has been the theme so far on the young season for the Brewers, who are now down three starters from their opening-day rotation.

DL Hall was placed on the IL on Sunday with a left knee sprain and Jakob Junis has been on the IL since April 6 with a shoulder impingement.

Then there’s closer Devin Williams, who will remain sidelined until roughly the all-star break with stress fractures in his back.

‘There’s a limit to depth,’ Murphy said with a chuckle. ‘Nine of our top 16 pitchers are out, so we’re having to fill in with guys that we had no idea would be in the big leagues. That’s a challenge. But at the same time, it’s a great opportunity.

‘It forces us to do everything we can sometimes without the luxuries that other teams have, that have a different type of depth, different type of starters.’

Junis, meanwhile, resumed playing catch Friday after the scary incident he endured in Pittsburgh on Monday.

‘A lot better,’ Junis said. ‘The first day or two was pretty rough; had headaches and was sore and stuff.’

Junis was his in the back of his head by a batted ball during Pirates batting practice. Although players routinely shag fly balls and do running workouts throughout pre-game, what happened to Junis was somewhat unusual.

‘I was just doing some sprints. Got toward the end of my sprint and someone said heads up. I turned my head out of the way and it just squared me up. Got me right where my hairline meets my neck. Dropped me pretty good.

‘Wasn’t feeling too hot there for a little bit. I’d kind of describe it as it stunned me and took me off my feet. I don’t remember falling down; I just remember rolling over and taking my glasses off and covering my eyes.’

Junis was immobilized, taken off the field in an ambulance and then examined at a local hospital.

‘Got all the tests and an MRI and CT scan and avoided the major damage,’ he said. ‘Thankfully, no bleeding in the brain or broken vertebrae in the neck or anything like that.

‘Just a really tough hit and sore for a few days.’

With regard to Junis, Murphy said the Brewers need to be open-minded about his potential role on the pitching staff whenever he’s healthy enough to return.

‘We’ve got to decide,’ he said. ‘He’s had chronic shoulder issues. That’s maybe why the Giants had him doing what he was doing (relieving with occasional starts). So, we’ve got to consider that.’

This post appeared first on USA TODAY
Keep Reading
By
Sports

In Game 3 thriller, Pacers blow 19-point lead before edging Bucks in OT

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Pacers blew a 19-point lead and allowed the Milwaukee Bucks to force overtime, but All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton’s floater with 1.4 seconds left gave them a 121-118 win at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference playoff series.

The Pacers take a 2-1 lead over the Bucks with Game 4 coming Sunday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

With the game tied at 118 with 6.7 seconds to go in overtime following a game-tying 3-pointer by Milwaukee’s Khris Middleton, Haliburton took the inbounds pass, got downhill to the foul line, pulled up and hit a one-handed floater and drew a foul. He hit the free throw to give the Pacers a 3-point lead and Middleton missed a 3-pointer to allow the Pacers to survive.

‘I just knew I was shooting the ball’ Haliburton said of his game-winning play. ‘I told everybody to just give me the ball, let’s go win the game.’

Here are four observations:

Tyrese Haliburton posts triple-double, hits game-winning floater

Tyrese Haliburton’s first playoff series hasn’t been easy as the Bucks have focused their defense on stopping him and his jump shot hasn’t been doing him many favors.

But on Friday he battled through everything. He kept moving the ball trying to make the right play. He shot the shots that were available to him. He even crashed the glass harder than he usually does. And then when the game was on the line, he hit the shot that won it.

Haliburton finished 8 of 22 from the field, 1 of 12 from 3-point range with 18 points, but dished out 16 assists and grabbed 10 rebounds, including five on the offensive end.

Khris Middleton brings Bucks all the way back

Middleton’s sprained right ankle kept him out of practice on Thursday and he wasn’t even cleared to go by the time Doc Rivers spoke in his pre-game press conference. But once he was good to go, he was at his best.

Middleton scored 42 points on 16-of-29 shooting, including 4-of-9 from 3-point range. He forced overtime almost all by himself scoring the Bucks’ last five points, including a sidewinding 3-pointer with 1.4 seconds to go that tied the game at 111 to send it to overtime. He hit another three with 6.7 seconds left that tied the game before Haliburton’s game-winning floater.

Myles Turner remains key to offense

The Pacers have two All-Stars that their offense largely revolves around. Haliburton is the mastermind and orchestrator of their uptempo transition game and two-time All-NBA forward Pascal Siakam is their go-to guy when things break down and they need someone to somehow get a bucket.

But it can be easily argued that their success or failure in this series rides largely on the shoulder of center Myles Turner, the longest tenured member of the roster.

As Haliburton’s pick-and-roll partner, Turner can be the beneficiary when Haliburton is double teamed on ball screens and Turner gets free space to roll behind blitzes. When the Bucks tag him off those rolls, that can leave Siakam or others open and sometimes can give him the opportunity to create. When Turner can score at all three levels and pass, that largely leaves defenses in scrambled positions and makes it easier for everyone else to operate.

Just as he was in Game 2, Turner gave the Pacers what they needed offensively in Game 3, with mid-range shooting, outside shooting, points at the rim and sharp passing. He scored 29 points on 10 of 21 shooting including 4-of-10 from 3-point range.

Obi Toppin shows off mid-range in efficient shooting night

Obi Toppin shot 70.6% from 2-point range this season largely because most of his 2-pointers were layups and dunks. According to Basketball Reference, 54% of his total field goal attempts came within 10 feet of the rim and 43.7% of his attempts were 3s, which left about 3% from between 10 feet and the 3-point line.

But Toppin showed on Friday that he does in fact have an in-between game to go with his high-flying athleticism and skilled rim finishes as well as his outside touch. In the first half he hit his first five shots, which included a one-handed floater from 14 1/2 feet and a pull-up jumper from 17 feet as well as a layup, a dunk and a 3 from the corner. Toppin had 14 points in the first half on 6 of 8 shooting including 2 of 3 from 3-point range.

This post appeared first on USA TODAY
Keep Reading
By
Sports

Shohei Ohtani, booed by spurned Blue Jays fans, shuts them up with HR

Shohei Ohtani finally took to the skies in Toronto – at the expense of the Blue Jays, no less.

Hearing boos for one of the few times in his career after erroneous December media reports had him ticketed to join the Blue Jays in free agency, Ohtani silenced the Rogers Centre crowd Friday night with a towering home run in his first at-bat in Toronto since the free agent frenzy.

Ohtani hit his seventh home run of the season off Toronto starter Chris Bassitt, bringing some sense of closure to one of the stranger offseason episodes in major league history.

In case you forgot: An MLB Network report stated Ohtani was on his way to Toronto on Dec. 8, and a separate report indicated Ohtani had reached agreement with the Blue Jays – sparking an online frenzy to track a flight from Southern California to Toronto.

One problem: Ohtani was not on the plane. And no agreement was in place.

MLB SALARIES: Baseball’s top 25 highest-paid players in 2024

Instead, a day later, Ohtani announced on Instagram he had reached agreement with the Los Angeles Dodgers. His 10-year, $700 million deal ensured the globe’s biggest baseball star would join one of the game’s most storied franchises.

It also set the stage for a lackluster offseason for the Blue Jays, who failed to significantly upgrade a playoff team and currently are off to a 13-13 start.

So it was little wonder that the home crowd was a little salty Friday night – not that Ohtani had anything to do with sparking their false hopes nearly five months ago.

‘I was as surprised as any fans in terms of the news going around,’ Ohtani said this week in Washington, via interpreter Will Ireton. ‘I was just following the news. I knew I wasn’t on that flight, so I was curious, too. But I did meet with the Blue Jays organization and the impression I got was it’s a really, really great organization.

‘The fans are great and I love the city too, so I’m really looking forward to going to Toronto.’

You’d think it was nothing personal, but Blue Jays fans did not take it that way.

Ohtani’s response, then, was strictly business.

This post appeared first on USA TODAY
Keep Reading
By
Sports

NHL teams in trouble: Why Lightning, Islanders, Capitals trail 3-0

The Tampa Bay Lightning were the epitome of playoff success, winning Stanley Cup titles in 2020 and 2021 and reaching the final in 2022.

But they were ousted in the first round last season and are down 3-0 to the Florida Panthers this postseason.

The New York Islanders, meanwhile, went 8-0-1 down the stretch to clinch the third spot in the Metropolitan Division. But they have been shut down by the Carolina Hurricanes and are down 3-0 in their series.

The Washington Capitals also trail 3-0 in their series after falling to the New York Rangers 3-1 on Friday night.

The Panthers and Hurricanes can wrap up their series on Saturday, and the Rangers can do that on Sunday.

Here’s what has gone wrong with the Lightning, Islanders and Capitals:

What has gone wrong with the Tampa Bay Lightning?

They have been hurt by their success and the salary cap. Success brings higher salaries, and the cap forces teams to make decisions. The Lightning survived the loss of their third line in the 2021 offseason to get back to the Final. But they lost Ondrej Palat in 2022 and Alex Killorn, Ross Colton, Corey Perry and Patrick Maroon last offseason. That’s a lot of playoff experience. They’re loaded at the top with NHL leading scorer Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Brandon Hagel, etc. But they lack the depth of previous runs, especially with defenseman Mikhail Sergachev out with a broken leg.

The Panthers are deeper and have the experience of last season’s run to the Stanley Cup Final. Goalie Sergei Bobrovsky is playing like he did in the 2023 playoffs. His Game 2 stop on Matt Dumba was the save of the playoffs.

What has gone wrong with the New York Islanders?

They have run into a better team. The Hurricanes beat the Islanders in the first round last season and now have a healthy Andrei Svechnikov, plus trade deadline acquisitions Jake Guentzel and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Goalie Frederik Andersen is healthy and on top of his game. The Islanders are pretty much the same as the team from the 2023 series, outside of new coach Patrick Roy.

The Islanders were the better team for much of Game 1’s loss and took a 3-0 lead in Game 2. But the Hurricanes dialed up the pressure and chipped away at the lead as the Islanders had trouble getting the puck out of the zone. The Islanders were outshot 17-1 in the third period and gave up two goals in nine seconds to complete the collapse.

Roy, who went with goalie Semyon Varlamov down the stretch because 2023 Vezina Trophy finalist Ilya Sorokin had taken a step back, tried Sorokin in Game 3. He was pulled after giving up three goals on 14 shots in the 3-2 loss that put the Islanders on the brink of elimination.

What has gone wrong with the Washington Capitals?

They also have run into a better team. The Rangers won the Presidents’ Trophy, and the Capitals didn’t clinch a spot until their final game. New York had a +53 goal differential to the Capitals’ -37. The Rangers added at the trade deadline while the Capitals dealt Kuznetsov and Joel Edmundson.

The Rangers ranked in the top three in the power play and penalty kill in the regular season, and that has been a difference in this series. The Rangers have two short-handed goals and three power-play goals. Though the Capitals had two power-play goals in Game 2, they went 0-for-6 on Friday.

Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin, the NHL’s No. 2 all-time goal scorer, had no shots on goal in Game 1 (five were blocked) and one in Game 2 before he had four in Game 3. “I think I have to find the open space more,” he told reporters. “It’s playoffs. It’s a different level of hockey.”

Also hurting the Capitals: They lost defensemen Rasmus Sandin and Nick Jensen in the final games of the regular season. Defenseman Vincent Iorio was hurt in Game 1, and Trevor van Riemsdyk left Friday’s game and didn’t return after a Matt Rempe hit.

‘I’m sick and tired of losing defensemen to quote ‘clean hits,” defenseman John Carlson told reporters. ‘Whether it’s at the end of the regular season or in the playoffs, it’s frustrating how guys can get injured and it’s legal.’

This post appeared first on USA TODAY
Keep Reading
By